Blockchain powered internet?

[Abiky]

I'm not sure if this exists yet, but if it does, it would totally decentralize the internet. Being blockchain powered, its content would become immutable, making it difficult for any government or nefarious organization, to take control over it and shutdown the websites living under such system.

I've heard about Maidsafe, but recently found out that it was not blockchain powered. Still, it has interesting technology that might become useful once released.

What do you think?

[jonald_fyookball]

not sure you really need Blockchain per se.  Blockchain's purpose is decentralized consensus, but the www purpose is free sharing of information.

[eternalgloom]

I agree with Jonald above me, would you really need blockchain per se?
Have you heard about Blockstack? I think you'd find it pretty interesting as well, as it's also a decentralized internet of sorts.

https://blockstack.org/

[adam440]

We definitely need more private and decentralized internet. However, I'm not sure if blockchain is the right way. Blockchains create trust and allow consensus along with a large number of nodes. But they archive this by copying everything everywhere. Can you imagine, that every computer connected to the internet would also store everything on the internet? Even with technologies like sharding, this would be ridiculous. I think you should rather look to solutions based on onion routing (TOR). There's still a lot of work to be done to achieve good decentralization and good speed at the same time. Sybil attacks are also a big problem in these networks.  If someone could solve these problems, it will be a true revolution in terms of privacy. But be aware of NSA/CIA/GHCQ/FSB and other agencies.

[aardvark15]

If this improved privacy protections for individuals, then it would be a good idea. But if everything is available for everyone else to see, I'm not sure that it would improve privacy.

[fkod]

Maidsafe improves itself day by day. I believe, maidsafe developing more.. many more powered internet. The future looks very bright.

[xskl0]

It will probably be banned

[jonald_fyookball]

It will probably be banned

i thought the whole point of decentralized internet would be so you cant ban it, or enforce it anyway

[Abiky]

We definitely need more private and decentralized internet. However, I'm not sure if blockchain is the right way. Blockchains create trust and allow consensus along with a large number of nodes. But they archive this by copying everything everywhere. Can you imagine, that every computer connected to the internet would also store everything on the internet? Even with technologies like sharding, this would be ridiculous. I think you should rather look to solutions based on onion routing (TOR). There's still a lot of work to be done to achieve good decentralization and good speed at the same time. Sybil attacks are also a big problem in these networks.  If someone could solve these problems, it will be a true revolution in terms of privacy. But be aware of NSA/CIA/GHCQ/FSB and other agencies.

You do have a point there, mate. As blockchains store everything on every node, it would take up a lot of space on each user's computer. Thus, by storing every copy of each site on a node, would not be the most viable solution. I think that the only use case that the blockchain would have now would be to audit and prove the existence of data in an immutable ledger.

If it were to be applied to sites on the internet, that would be proving ownership of an specific site's domain, and other info. Still, I believe that if at some point in the future, the blockchain would be used to power the internet, it would make it virtually unstoppable, especially if it would have massive hashrate just like Bitcoin's to secure the network.

Those government agencies won't take long enough before they discover how to penetrate the blockchain, and put an end towards the above concept.

By the way, I've seen another great concept of decentralized internet called ZeroNet. It may not use a blockchain, but still it is very interesting as it uses P2P technology making websites remain on the network if at least a single peer is "seeding" it. Just my thoughts. 

[matt11235]

There's Namecoin for decentralised DNS/domain registration.

[lionheart78]

If it were to be applied to sites on the internet, that would be proving ownership of an specific site's domain, and other info. Still, I believe that if at some point in the future, the blockchain would be used to power the internet, it would make it virtually unstoppable, especially if it would have massive hashrate just like Bitcoin's to secure the network.

Does it really need a huge hash to secure the network? Why not make it cost effective by removing the pow side.  As far as I know nodes can verify transaction even without miners.  And anything not acknowledge by majority of the nodes is not accepted to modify what is in the ledger.  I would love to see a green world where heat generating miners is out of the scene.

[Pettuh4]

I'm not sure if this exists yet, but if it does, it would totally decentralize the internet. Being blockchain powered, its content would become immutable, making it difficult for any government or nefarious organization, to take control over it and shutdown the websites living under such system.

I've heard about Maidsafe, but recently found out that it was not blockchain powered. Still, it has interesting technology that might become useful once released.

What do you think?

Interesting stuff and hopefully it will replace mainstream Internet in the coming years. I'm happy it's evolved from our camp and hopefully it will grow from here.

[countryfree]

What? A blockchain powered Internet makes no sense.
I don't even think a DNS resolution service on a blockchain would be better than what we have now.

[andrew24p]

We dont need it yet, maybe there will be a solution in the future, but most likely blockchain isnt it.

[Abiky]

There's Namecoin for decentralised DNS/domain registration.

Yes. Namecoin is ideal for registering domain names without any central operator behind it. While the concept is promising, it only decentralizes domain name access/creation, not the whole internet.

Still, it could be used in combination with another network whose purpose is to decentralize the internet. 

Does it really need a huge hash to secure the network? Why not make it cost effective by removing the pow side.  As far as I know nodes can verify transaction even without miners.  And anything not acknowledge by majority of the nodes is not accepted to modify what is in the ledger.  I would love to see a green world where heat generating miners is out of the scene.

It could be that way, as it is energy efficient, and removes miners out of the equation. However, I was more inclined towards PoW consensus since it is the most secure up to date. I believe that at some point PoS would be improved, once ETH migrates to Casper, making it a viable and better alternative towards securing any cryptocurrency's network. But until now, PoW would be the most secure way towards helping protect the network against 51% attacks. Just my thoughts. 

[Hydrogen]

Blockchain powered internet might function as an alternate form of password based security where instead of a password a person might use their blockchain secret key to authenticate their identity & login to social media, etc.

Other than that, I can't think of many applications.

[deisik]

I'm not sure if this exists yet, but if it does, it would totally decentralize the internet. Being blockchain powered, its content would become immutable, making it difficult for any government or nefarious organization, to take control over it and shutdown the websites living under such system.

I've heard about Maidsafe, but recently found out that it was not blockchain powered. Still, it has interesting technology that might become useful once released.

What do you think?

Internet is already decentralized

And it is conceptually decentralized. While you would have to use the DNS system to access sites using their mnemonic names (e.g. bitcointalk.org), which can be considered as some form of centralization, you can still access the same site in a completely decentralized way using its IP address. You just need to know this address, which loosely matches a wallet address in Bitcoin, as well as the IP address of your gateway. The latter can be construed as a mining node of sorts confirming your request and sending it to its own gateway or directly to the site if it is a gateway to it. Note that you don't have to pay any fees for sending and receiving network requests, and the same should be done in Bitcoin in regard to transactions

[Abiky]

Blockchain powered internet might function as an alternate form of password based security where instead of a password a person might use their blockchain secret key to authenticate their identity & login to social media, etc.

Other than that, I can't think of many applications.

The blockchain could prove its use case for the internet, as it is an immutable and decentralized database free from manipulation, unlike standard databases used on websites. Using it as a form of password based security sounds like a great idea, and might strengthen the security of user accounts on any site hosted on the web.

But I believe that as blockchain matures, it would be used for other sorts of applications to decentralized the internet further. It may reach up to a point where no one could take down a specific site, as it would be secured by the blockchain.

Internet is already decentralized

And it is conceptually decentralized. While you would have to use the DNS system to access sites using their mnemonic names (e.g. bitcointalk.org), which can be considered as some form of centralization, you can still access the same site in a completely decentralized way using its IP address. You just need to know this address, which loosely matches a wallet address in Bitcoin, as well as the IP address of your gateway. The latter can be construed as a mining node of sorts confirming your request and sending it to its own gateway or directly to the site if it is a gateway to it. Note that you don't have to pay any fees for sending and receiving network requests, and the same should be done in Bitcoin in regard to transactions

It could be seen that way, although it is somewhat centralized in the sense that governments could shut down a specific site, as well as ISPs being able to censor access to certain sites. However, with a fully decentralized internet powered by the blockchain, it would make it harder for government agencies to take down any site, as the same would be replicated across all the nodes on the network. I know that it may not be the most viable solution for large sites, as the blockchain data would become even bigger than Bitcoin's, but as storage capacity increases over time, it may become a reality at some point in the future.

Just my opinion.

[Kprawn]

Blockchain powered internet might function as an alternate form of password based security where instead of a password a person might use their blockchain secret key to authenticate their identity & login to social media, etc.

Other than that, I can't think of many applications.

The blockchain could prove its use case for the internet, as it is an immutable and decentralized database free from manipulation, unlike standard databases used on websites. Using it as a form of password based security sounds like a great idea, and might strengthen the security of user accounts on any site hosted on the web.

But I believe that as blockchain matures, it would be used for other sorts of applications to decentralized the internet further. It may reach up to a point where no one could take down a specific site, as it would be secured by the blockchain.

Internet is already decentralized

And it is conceptually decentralized. While you would have to use the DNS system to access sites using their mnemonic names (e.g. bitcointalk.org), which can be considered as some form of centralization, you can still access the same site in a completely decentralized way using its IP address. You just need to know this address, which loosely matches a wallet address in Bitcoin, as well as the IP address of your gateway. The latter can be construed as a mining node of sorts confirming your request and sending it to its own gateway or directly to the site if it is a gateway to it. Note that you don't have to pay any fees for sending and receiving network requests, and the same should be done in Bitcoin in regard to transactions

It could be seen that way, although it is somewhat centralized in the sense that governments could shut down a specific site, as well as ISPs being able to censor access to certain sites. However, with a fully decentralized internet powered by the blockchain, it would make it harder for government agencies to take down any site, as the same would be replicated across all the nodes on the network. I know that it may not be the most viable solution for large sites, as the blockchain data would become even bigger than Bitcoin's, but as storage capacity increases over time, it may become a reality at some point in the future.

Just my opinion.

Why would you want to spam a financial payment system with useless non-financial related information? This will also lead to centralization

when the Blockchain grows too big. A huge Blockchain would force some people too stop running a node, because of increased bandwidth and

storage space. In the end you will have a few data warehouses running nodes and this will kill decentralization. 

[Jet Cash]

Internet packets have always been chained, otherwise they couldn't be reassembled.